Summertime Page 18

  He tried to say the words as he unwrapped the scarf from Trilby’s eyes, but still they refused to come out. Dr Mellon had told him to say them, he knew he should say them, but there was no way at all that they would come out. Instead he stared around him, as Trilby was staring around her, and he marvelled at his own generosity. It was a marvellous room. He almost felt jealous of its air of freedom, its marvellous light, its very whiteness. He would like a room like this for himself. But then he remembered, as always, that he was the person giving the surprise, he was the giver, not the receiver. No-one ever gave to Lewis. He was, after all, rich, and powerful, the Great Provider. No-one ever gave anything to him.

  ‘Lewis.’ Trilby walked around the studio room looking into cupboards and peering through to a small kitchen and bathroom, opening a door into a courtyard garden, gazing up at the high north-facing windows above them. ‘Lewis, I can’t believe this.’

  Neither could Lewis, but he could not say so.

  ‘I asked Micklethwaite to find it for me, and he did, within a few days, as a matter of fact. And it is yours, my darling, my darling Trilby’s own room, to come to whenever she wants, but I hope not too often, or I shall miss her.’

  If she had been feeling more attractive Trilby would have kissed her husband, but as she was feeling, and judging from her reflection in the mirror on the landing also looking, like a piece of chewed string, she kissed her fingers to him, and turned back to the studio room.

  Lewis had ordered easels, and a table for her pencils and pads, and a chest whose pulled drawers displayed a vast amount of oil paints and coloured chalks; in fact everything that she, or anyone else for that matter, could want.

  Lewis stared at her. He desperately wanted her to kiss him with her former passion, but he knew from Dr Mellon that for some reason this would not yet be possible. Women went off that kind of thing after miscarriages, the doctor had said. Lewis had to bide his time. It was just a fact. You could not argue with it. He turned away. He had to wait. Or did he? The thought occurred and would not go away – perhaps Micklethwaite could oblige him with someone, fix him up with someone discreet just for the interim, just until his wife, his darling Trilby, was better.

  PART TWO

  The way that lovers use is this;

  They bow, catch hands, with never a word,

  And their lips meet, and they do kiss,

  – So I have heard.

  Rupert Brooke, The Way That Lovers Use

  Chapter Six

  Piers stared at himself in the mirror. The one good thing about going to see his Aunt Laura in London was that his mirror reflected a more sophisticated image than his usual everyday appearance. Today, once the mud and the dust had been soaped off, he might even be described as vaguely pleasant-looking, he told himself, staring at his face in his shaving mirror.

  Tall, fair curly hair, slim, lightly tanned, he might not be God’s gift to anyone, but at least, thanks to the West Country, he had the bonny outdoor look of a man brought up on good dairy produce, home-made bread and the roast beef of Old England.

  ‘Come on, Topsie,’ he called, whistling to his black retriever bitch, who promptly climbed out of Piers’s still unmade bed, stretched, and wandered downstairs after him. ‘Look after Topsie, will you, Mabel?’ he called through to his cowman’s wife in the kitchen.

  Mabel hurried into the hall, her crisply aproned body presenting a reassuring sight as she walked through the old, worn, green-painted door.

  ‘You going on, are you, Mr Piers? Well then, on you go, and enjoy yourself in London, and that.’

  Piers touched the top of his dog’s head. ‘And you look after Mabel, Tops, and don’t do anything that I would not do, at least not while I am in London.’

  ‘You take care of yourself in London, Mr Piers. You know what them’s like up there, take the skin off of your back, they will, in London. Take the skin off of your back.’

  Piers paused and smiled at Mabel. It was an accepted part of their relationship that neither of them questioned Mabel’s profound knowledge of London, although neither Mabel nor Harold had ever been there, not even passing through on a train, which was not that surprising since neither of them had even been on a train.

  ‘I shall be very careful, Mabel. I always am. I keep in mind everything you tell me, believe me.’

  ‘Well just as well, Mr Piers, just as well. Them’s all thieves and robbers up there, I tell you.’

  ‘I know, Mabel. So you keep saying, and so you have said for the past week or so.’

  ‘And it bears repeating, like onion, Mr Piers. It bears repeating. That London’s full of thieves and robbers, and worse. Them could be out for you, seeing you are a Montague. Them’s got folk there that can have their knives in high-ups like you. And worse.’

  Piers could never imagine what might be ‘worse’ when Mabel was in this kind of mood. This morning, probably because for once he was not in a hurry, he asked her. ‘I say, Mabel, what is worse?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Piers?’

  ‘I was just wondering what could be worse than thieves and robbers and people with their knives out?’

  Mabel looked at him balefully. There was no other word for it. Whenever Mabel regarded Piers balefully she reminded him of Eva, the worst-tempered of his cows.

  ‘What is worse, Mr Piers, is fancy women.’ Mabel turned away. ‘Because they don’t just take your money, they take your brains too, specially like when they know you are a Montague!’

  Piers laughed and picked up his suitcase. ‘Much chance I have of meeting a fancy woman in my Aunt Laura’s house, Mabel. About as much chance as I have of winning the Derby with Lullabelle’.

  ‘That Lullabelle, she’s got to you has that cow. Never known anything like it.’

  Mabel went back to the kitchen and Piers picked up his suitcases and wandered off past the empty stables, past the fields where his two hunters were turned out, and towards the old hay barn where his sports car was housed, realising with a feeling of almost shocking delight that it was probably going to be sunny enough to have the roof down for his long drive to London.

  He glanced down at his grandfather’s old wristwatch, working out that it would probably take him six or seven hours to reach London from Somerset, with a good stop for lunch. He hoped that Harold had remembered to start the car up for him every week, and to charge her battery, for it had been months since he had been able to afford the time to leave the farm for more than a few hours, such were the demands of farming life.

  ‘Come on, old girl.’ He patted the MG’s dark green shining body. ‘Time to go for a spin, eh?’

  The car must have heard him for without too much ado she started up and Piers, having let her have a few joyous revs, rather like the way he allowed his hunter to give a few joyous, good-natured bucks of a morning, backed her out of the hay barn, avoiding the chickens that were wandering about outside its tall, wooden doors.

  “Bye, Mr Piers.’ Harold came up to the car window, his face as always a picture of misery when Piers left for his annual trip to see his Aunt Laura in London.

  ‘You take care of yourself, Mr Piers. You know how it is in London, it’s full of no goods, and young women with mischief on their minds.’

  ‘So Mabel has just reminded me, Harold. Very kind of you to do the same.’

  ‘Well.’ Harold stood back from the car, scratching at his sparse hair under his cap. ‘Well, that is how it is, Mr Piers. It’s full of no goods is a city like London, and we want you to come back to Somerset in one piece, that’s what we want.’

  ‘I shall do my best, Harold.’ Piers smiled up at him from the MG.

  ‘You do that.’ Harold took off his cap, and waved it. ‘You come back safe to us, Mr Piers.’

  Piers watched him in his mirror as he manoeuvred his way slowly down the potholed drive.

  The country lanes were frequently potholed and so, even after he had left his own short drive, Piers felt a great deal of the rough road surface throug
h his car seat as he drove towards Bath and so to London, but no-one needed to tell him that summer was on its way, for not only was the blossom well over, and the primroses in the hedgerows jostling with bluebells, but the fresh sap green of the trees seemed, like the dawn chorus of the morning, to have suddenly burst upon him. The whole suggestion of summer’s long-awaited glories that emanated from the countryside around him was entirely divorced from his usual perceptions of nature, and it seemed to him that he might well have just come back from abroad, so different did the world of a sudden appear to a young man temporarily freed from his responsibilities.

  Indeed the weather, usually a matter for anguished debate between himself and Harold, had now become, like so much when a normal day has turned to holiday, a delight, and he found that he no longer cared whether or not it was about to turn, or whether it would mean feast or famine for the farm by autumn, only that it was there. The sun was shining and for once he was part of everything: the sun, the sky, the verdant, the celadon, the cyprus and the bice; he was part of every shade of every little glorious and varied green inch of the day.

  ‘La donna è mobile!’ he sang as he put his foot down on the accelerator. ‘Blah blah blah blahbity, la dee dee dee-ee, blah blah blah blah-ah . . .’

  He would stop for lunch on the way, and make sure that it was a decent one at that, no undressed lettuce leaves, no tomatoes with a sunken look accompanying a piece of fatty ham.

  The sign outside declared it to be a pub, but inside it was indeed what it proclaimed itself to be, the Cricketers Inn, and it was full of the reassuring Englishness that a countryman travelling from his own safe environs to an inviting lunch wishes for himself.

  First of all it had an old brass handle on the half-glassed door, then it had a step or two down, and no unobliging receptionist, but just a flagged stone floor which led to a large square hall that boasted a grandfather clock and a large glass cupboard full of cricketing trophies, not to mention photographs of pre-war teams, and mementoes from old matches. Piers turned away from this welcoming sight to follow signs to a low-ceilinged bar hung about with fishing trophies, always such a reassurance to a country sportsman. And then, after a good pint of much needed beer, to the dining room where stiff white tablecloths and napkins were not the only signs of the good table kept by Mine Host; there was also a covered sideboard displaying fruit and cheeses, cream crackers and bottles of every kind.

  As he sat down Piers smiled at the sunlight, the bright displays, the waiters, but most of all at the thought that he was in safe hands – and that was before he tasted the roast lamb, the home-made mint sauce, or the lemon meringue pie.

  Some few hours later found him parking outside his aunt’s house in Trevor Square. Indulging in this newest and most carefree of moods Piers left the MG’s hood down, and strolled up to Aunt Laura’s front door, carrying his hat and suitcase and smiling for no really good reason that he could think of at that moment.

  ‘Maria!’

  ‘Master Piers!’

  He and his aunt’s maid always greeted each other as if each had not seen the other for a year and a day. It was a pleasant sort of ritual. Piers then handed her his hat and suitcase. Maria took his hat and hung it reverentially in the downstairs cloakroom, but left the suitcase for the undermaid whom his aunt also employed, for Aunt Laura still liked to think that she, and perhaps she alone, kept up pre-war standards.

  ‘Piers.’

  ‘Aunt Laura.’

  Because he knew she liked it, Piers bent over her hand, in the manner of a foreign diplomat, nearly kissing it, and then kissed her cheek.

  ‘Piers, may I introduce Mrs Lola de Ribes? She is an interior decorator. She is helping me with the drawing room. She is very talented. I may say, in my opinion she has the eye, you know?’

  Inwardly Piers sighed. He knew that Aunt Laura never did let a week go by without selling a picture or buying a new one, buying some new Meissen or selling some old silver, repainting or refurbishing a room. He knew that it was her way of keeping busy, and of course it was innocent enough, but today he suspected more. He suspected that she had intentions, and said so, as he shook Lola de Ribes’s hand.

  ‘You are not here for nothing, you are here to exert undue influence on me, are you not, Mrs de Ribes? I know before the hour is out Aunt Laura is going to strongarm me into using your services, isn’t she?’

  Lola de Ribes smiled. ‘I only decorate for friends, you know,’ she announced.

  ‘Lola has just had me made the most perfect curtains for my bedroom . . .’

  But Piers was not interested in the perfection of Aunt Laura’s bedroom curtains. Despite his satisfying lunch at the Cricketers Inn, he found that all he could think of, all he could look forward to, was Maria’s cooking. He hoped that she was going to serve them her famous fish pie of prawns, hard boiled eggs and white fish in a glistening parsley and lemon sauce, and the softest topping of pureed potato mixed with a light cheese. Frankly, he was now so hungry it did not bear thinking about.

  After a polite interval, he left the two women and went to his room to bathe, rest and refresh before changing into the required post-war black dinner jacket, and bow tie, despite the fact that they were dining alone.

  Later, Aunt Laura smiled down the dinner table at him. ‘You were quite right, I did ask Lola de Ribes here for a reason, well, several reasons, really. And one of them is that I do think that you need help at the farm, I mean not with the farming,’ she added quickly, ‘but with the interior. You need to be made more comfy, with squashy sofas, and nice colours. You’ve done nothing with it since I handed it over to you, you know. And really it would be nice if you did, because apart from anything else you could ask your crusty old aunt down to stay for a few days and be sure to make her comfortable.’

  Piers smiled ruefully. ‘I haven’t really had the time, what with the farm and everything.’

  ‘Of course you haven’t really had the time. How could a farmer like you have time for such things as interiors? But it would make a difference if you could have someone who would do it for you. Most especially important to be comfortable in winter, d’you see? If you came into a cosy house what a difference it would make. Lola really could help you there. She’s very good at advising, and only does it for friends.’

  ‘Of course. Have you ever met an interior decorator who did it for money?’

  ‘Oh, touché, quite so,’ Laura agreed. ‘This will amuse you, then! Lola told me that there are so many divorced women who have taken to interior decorating to earn a dollar or two in New York that a divorcée is now referred to as an “interior decorator”. It seems rather than announce you are divorcing nowadays you say, “We are in the middle of redecorating.”’ They both laughed. ‘Have you anything planned, do you think, for your week in London?’

  Piers shook his head. ‘Nothing that I can think of, just seeing you, and so on. Would you rather I had?’

  His aunt smiled. This was typical of Piers. Always ready to accommodate someone else, no matter what. In that respect he was what one read about and hardly ever came across, the perfect gentleman.

  ‘It is funny, isn’t it?’ She paused. ‘Coming to London to relax!’

  ‘I know, but you know farming, up at four thirty, bed at nine, what time is there to enjoy yourself?’

  ‘I know. And one does need more than a game of cards on a Saturday night.’

  Piers looked thoughtful. He enjoyed the company of his farming neighbours, games of nap on a Saturday night, but the truth was that despite his active life he was lonely, and sometimes, worse than that, he knew it.

  ‘Tomorrow morning I am going round to see a young friend of mine. Well, she’s not a friend of mine, she’s a friend of Lola de Ribes. She’s had a bit of a bad time of it lately, some kind of mental breakdown, and the doctor has ordered painting as a way of getting better. We met at a party at the de Ribes’ house, and apparently, for some ridiculous reason, she took it into her head that she wanted to paint m
e. She used to be a cartoonist, something like that, but that’s gone, with this nervous breakdown, ’pparently, so now she has started to paint portraits, just for friends of course, nothing else.’

  On hearing this Piers could not prevent his heart from sinking. There was nothing, frankly, that he wanted less than to accompany his aunt to the studio of some loopy artist who had suffered a nervous breakdown. Tomorrow morning sounded as if it was going to be about as exciting as having his hunter standing on his foot on a numbingly cold frosty morning.

  ‘I don’t know why this young lady should want to paint me, I am sure I don’t.’

  ‘I do. Because you are a beautiful woman, that is why.’

  His aunt blushed, although not so heartily as another woman of her age might have blushed, because the truth was that she was beautiful and she knew it. She had lovely long white hair that she wore in a stylish French plait, a pink and white Dresden china skin, blue-grey eyes and a perfect profile, which she herself always pronounced profeel.

  She had not only kept her figure, she had never lost it, even temporarily, so that she was still wearing some of the same classic evening clothes that she had worn on her honeymoon in India some – heaven only knew how many – years before. Although she was now a widow, and had no children, she was never lonely, having a plentiful supply of friends who liked to come and stay and be cosseted by her. Generally speaking she spent her life in London enjoying herself in a fashion that someone a great deal younger might find tiring.

  Tonight, however, by tacit consent, they both retired to bed early, neither wanting to keep the other up too late. Besides, as Aunt Laura explained to Piers, she had been to a dance the night before, had not returned until the early hours, and now felt she ought to catch up on her beauty sleep.

  Breakfast the next morning was so perfectly served and held so many culinary delights that Piers found himself accompanying his aunt to her young friend’s studio with less dread than he would have expected. Perhaps the fresh look to London on a warm spring day with the ladies all wearing some form or another of smart grey suiting lifted his spirits, or perhaps it was just that London after so many, many months away had a foreign look, and the people the same, so different were they from those that he normally passed in Somerset.